Suggestion for Rank Discrimination

GW is not a mandatory charity activity. Some players choose to run well-known guilds aimed at providing the education you describe. If that's what you want, join them.

If you want to get into a truly good group you'd better be good AND known to be good. No matter how well known you are, if you aren't good enough for the group's skill level you'll get booted after the first run. No matter how good you are, if no one knows about it groups will take players that aren't as good as you.

They will learn by analzing the match, learn from their and mistakes and the mistakes from others. Making mistakes and learning from them is the best way to get better no matter if an experienced player shows you your mistakes 100000 times if you don't see it yourself you wont learn.

The OP assumes that rank discrimination is a genuine problem. This assumption needs to be justified before there is any discussion of a possible "solution". As several people have already pointed out, rank discrimination is a symptom of good players wanting to play with other good players. I fail to see how this is undesirable.

By practicing? Watching obs mode? Playing together more? Learn through experience?

Too bad you can't get make a guild with a bunch of friends/other unranked players and practice and get better. Oh wait...............

There's far too much elitism in HA these days, and I agree that something should be done about it. How about making different arenas for different ranks? It would encourage players in any category to play. That's what it's come down to anyway. Drop into the international district sometime and you'll see all the teams being split between ranks. Speaking as someone who has been playing since GW was released and having no rank at all, I consider HA completely closed off for me. It's impossible to get a team, and I simply don't have the patience to wait for the random PUG that comes around once an hour and can't get past the first match.

As I see it, unless you got into HA when GW was fresh on the market, you've been left behind. What does that say for those people who want to buy PvP accounts and start playing? The obvious answer from half the people on these boards would be, "Get in a PvP guild." What a lame excuse. Having a guild should not be a requirement to play HA, that's what Guild Battles are for. It's ridiculous that ANet has let HA get this far gone, and frankly, feels like a trap for any new players who are interested.

rank itself is a flawed measure of skill.

as a flat single number it really doesn't tell you much apart from in the past this person has played HA for a period of time.

they could have gained their rank 4 years ago, during a bonus weekend or even during a period of gimmick build play.

what there really needs to be is rank over time, just as guilds rank/rating are mapped via a graph to really see how a player has performed, if they have been active recently, are consistent and their current form.

Do you want to know the biggest problem with this post? It is that you think a person with no rank deserves to be in a decent guild. You don't. You haven't earned anything. Do you know what type of guild a person with 0 experience gets to play in? It is a guild with other people who have 0 experience or a training guild (which are rare because the attitude new comers have is so unbelievably bad that no one wants to bother training you).

I and pretty much the rest of the PvP community started off playing with people who suck. We play with people who have no experience in PvP and want to break into it. It is what you do. You get better by playing with them and learning with them. You obs matches, you learn from your mistakes, you try, try, try, try, and try shit until it works. As a group you improve and get better. Eventually you will have that rank you always wanted.

It is like I've already stated in threads just like this before. You play at your level. If you are a middle school basketball player, you don't get to play with Michael Jordan. You play with middle schoolers. You work your way up, improve your abilities, until you have reached the point where you are good enough to play with the best. And guess what, IT IS GOING TO TAKE A LOT OF TIME. There is nothing you can do about it.

The problem isn't rank discrimination. It is the attitude of you new comers thinking you deserve to play with people who have been doing this for years. Not everyone is equal. This is not a carebear snugglefest where everyone is just as important as the next guy. This is a competitive environment. This is survival of the fittest. The better players are more important than you. You wanna be important? Then get on their level. Pro tip: Whining on a forum won't get you there.

I don't do too much PvP (just AB) so I am really not too qualified to post any suggestions. It just seems to me that what is being said is you need to practice to get better and you should do it against other newer players. My question is how do you really get any better if you don't get the chance to play with people higher ranked to know where you stand?

Absolutely true that we need better information, and a fair number of games have been moving toward this sort of rating model. The ladder was originally designed as both a handicapping tool and a means of judging guilds. Even it had problems, though. It rewarded playing a lot, which was undesirable and made it somewhat unreliable. I knew plenty of people in bottom-feeder guilds that couldn't beat their way out of a wet paper bag, but were top 100 because they beat anything ranked below 200 and played 20 times a day.

There are two problems with applying this sort of model to individual players of GW. First of all, it would increase the degree of discrimination based on skill. People would refuse to play their primary accounts with anyone that wasn't already known to be top flight. If you create a tiered ranking system, people's egos will demand that they be at the top of that ranking system.

Secondly, it's very hard to measure a player with automated analytics, except by the performance of their team. However, that is as much who you know as what you know, which would further reinforce discrimination.

Ideally, what we would want to know is: does your HA team stop failing and start winning and holding Halls right after you leave? Does your guild win more when just you are substituted out of the lineup? Unfortunately, this sort of information is very hard to compile and track. It could in principle be done (track how well the people you play with do when you're there and when you're not, adjusting for the skill level of the remainder of the team), but the design would not be a trivial task.

You did well with this post until the bolded part, where you just reinforce his prejudices further. It's not that the better players are more important, it's that they've earned certain privileges as a result of that effort and time investment. You're not more "important". Odds are that if you stop playing most of the community will forget about you in a hurry.

What does this even mean? How much elitism is "too much"? What determines whether there is too much elitism or too little?

The irony here is that rank elitism exists exactly because everyone tries to avoid this outcome. It's telling that you don't seem to understand this.

I would love to try HA but it's beyond dead... then factor in that you can use AI help as well (wtf?). TA is also just as bad, you spend all your looking for groups and no time playing... everybody likes planning and quitting groups rather than playing.

I could have chosen a better word to describe what I was saying than important, but I stand by my point that PvP is not an equality movement. There are people on a higher pedestal then you. There is no such thing as equal ground for all. There are different tiers of play and you do not start on the same tier as people who have been playing for 4 years.

So yea I agree I could have used better words than "they are more important" when trying to get that point across. Thank you for pointing that out to me.

People say "Players only want to play with good players"
But if a player can only become a good player by learning and working with good players to develop the knowledge, tactics and lingo etc...

How on earth is new talent generated, it's like the problem with rank itself, to get rank you NEED rank.

Apart from the bit where you don't need rank in order to earn fame. You just aren't going to be earning 100 fame per night or more..

If that were the case then no one would be good. Everyone who is "good" played with people who weren't when they started off. After playing the game a lot, you learn what works and what doesn't and you get better.

Why does everyone think you can only get better if you have a great player holding your hand? The best way to learn is to get better on your own. You learn the best by figuring out your mistakes and how to fix them on your own. Everybody, myself included, started off playing with terrible players. I learned by messing up. I would try to figure out why I messed up, and then stop doing that so I wouldn't mess up as often. Eventually I got better and started playing at a higher level of play.

STOP THINKING YOU NEED TO PLAY WITH BETTER PLAYERS IN ORDER TO GET BETTER. You get better by playing. No matter who it is with. You have to make yourself better, no one else can do it for you.

You can take a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.

Similarly, you can take a n00b to HA, but you can't make him wtfpwn.

This idea, while absolutely thoughtful and heart-felt by all means, is pure theorycraft and will fail as well as become abused very easily with multiple account fame-farmers.

/notsigned for abusability, plus opposing the idea of supporting mind-blindedly terrible players (aka: n00bs) to plague PvP even more.

Shouldn't bad suggestion threads be in Sardelac?

i think its a great idea..anet should impliment it right away.

HA inherently has no system to discriminate based on rank, time played, matches played, etc, etc. So, when the player population creates their own filter where it is impossible to get a team without rank. That is too much elitism.

It's telling that you don't understand the issue. It's not that I care elitism exists, it's only natural - I care that it's gotten to the point where it overruns HA, and there is now no middle ground. For someone without rank, it's either cannon fodder or nothing. How is that system not broken? Also, you should look up the definition of Irony.

Middle school basketballers and Michael Jordan? We are talking about a video game here, Pumpkin. This is hardly a fair comparison.



Now this is truly telling.
You new comers? Survival of the fittest? Better players are more important than you? It is exactly ^this^ kind of attitude that is the problem - believing you have entitlement over anyone else because you think you're a better player. Any new comer to the game has every right to play with anyone else because he or she payed the price for an account. That's it.

No it's called I don't want to waste my time screwing myself and 6 other players on the team because one person has no RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing clue what they're doing.

Naivete at its finest.

Better Idea, remove fame title and silly emote,

Next problem please...

They don't think they are better players. They are better players. This isn't some sort of prejudice, this is empirical fact from tactical and mechanical ability that results in them being able to win games where you could not.

You don't have the right to waste someone else's time with your 'I paid for the game' nonsense. Evidently the concept of competition is foreign to you entirely.

It is a fair comparison because basketball and Guild Wars PvP are competitive environments with different levels of competition. Basketball has a top level (professional) and Guild Wars has a top level (High End Competitive PvP). You don't immediately decide I want to play basketball and get to play with the Chicago Bulls. You have to work at it and play at many different levels below professional before you are able to make it. It is the same with Guild Wars PvP. You don't decide I want to play GvG and join rawr. You start at the bottom and you work your way up each tier.

As for the second part, that is the way competition is buddy. If you are new to the game you are a newcomer. I fail to see the problem with that.

It is survival of the fittest. The best players play on the best teams and the best teams win the most. The bad teams lose.

I already touched on the more important thing being a bad choice of words to get my point across. Read the thread before responding. The point still stands that better players get to play with other better players and newer players get to play with newer players.

Better players do have entitlement over worse players. you do not have the right to play with great teams just because you bought the game. You have the right to get better and improve your game so that you may increase your play ability and be able to hold your own on that level. You don't go to your local sporting goods store, buy hockey pads and play for the Red Wings. It doesn't work that way. If you don't like it then tough, I guess you won't be playing PvP.

Your attitude is exactly what I'm talking about. You are not entitled to anything. You must earn what you want. Instead of starting where everyone else started, you want some free pass to play with people who have proven themselves and played this game competitively for years. It doesn't work like that. And there is no reason a competitive environment should. competitive teams shouldn't have to gimp themselves because you're too lazy to take the months to years required to become good.

I don't feel sorry for anyone who complains about not being able to play with higher ranked players when they have done nothing to prove themselves. Stop whining on a forum about people not wanting to gimp themselves for your benefit. Start playing the game and get better.

This is what it comes down to basically, with no emote it'll near kill all complaints like this thread,
no newbie will ever even attempt HA again because there's no need too.

Why has no one answered my question?

He asks almost the exact same question and I answered his on page 3 I believe. Yours is a bit different because it basically asks how do you know when you are good enough. The answer really isn't that hard to figure out. If you are playing HA and you want to join rank 7+ groups, you are good enough when you reach rank 7. If you are playing GvG and want to join an mAT guild, you know by whether or not people will accept you into their guild based off your application you sent to them.

The best way to evaluate yourself isn't from playing with great players. It is from playing against them. If you feel like you did very well and held your own fairly well, then perhaps you are good enough. If you get stomped, well then you need more work. It really is up to you to truthfully evaluate yourself and improve your skill.

Thank you, I guess I was combining against and with together and trying to figure out how that works.

Well, it's obvious that you're just trying to bait me, or you really didn't take the time to read what I wrote. Either way, I'll make it a little more clear for you, Honey.

Here is my issue. If you are a) new to Guild Wars, or b) new to PvP, and in this case specifically Heroes Ascent, you are at a severe disadvantage beyond simply being an inexperienced player. As a result of the ranking system, the player base has taken it upon themselves to segregate teams according to rank. It is a flaw in the game, and it is something that should be addressed by the developers. This has made it nearly impossible for someone without rank to get into a team, and a game that will teach them anything, or earn them rank to play with better teams. You need rank to get into an "experienced" team, and you need an experienced team to get rank. It's a vicious cycle, and requires unranked players to jump through hoops to get anything more than good fortune on the battlefield. Specifically joining a PvP guild. But wait, now there's PvP guilds with rank requirements, and so on. So how does a new player go about starting a successful journey into HA with the current state of the game? I see no reasonable avenues.

My problem isn't with rank requirements. It's fine if a guild, or a team wants to exclude other players based on a title. That's their prerogative. My problem is it leaves no alternative for anyone new to the game.


That's the way it should be, but it's not. Highly ranked players play with other highly ranked players, and new players simply get turned off to HA because there is no place for them there.


This is intensely elitist, and completely counter to building a competitive community - only an exclusive one.


It's not a free pass I think new players should have, it's a play environment that is accommodating to both fresh and seasoned players. As of now, it is not.



And your sports analogy? I fail to see how working towards a professional sports career is in any way comparable to playing a video game. And if you do see it that way? Well. Good luck with that.

You seem to be suggesting that, since HA doesn't force people to play with those of the same rank, that players should not be allowed to choose to play with those of the same rank. If so, please explain why this should be the case - why shouldn't high-rank players be allowed to make high-rank groups?

Furthermore, you can get teams without rank. There is nothing that prevents you from grabbing seven friends, guildies, or other no-rank randoms for HA. In fact, why don't all of the low-rank people complaining on Gurus about elitism just form their own groups?

Players are beaten by those who are better than them. Naturally, if most of the other players are better than you, you will lose the majority of the time. That's what being a beginner is all about - particularly when you're a beginner in a mature community that has many veteran players. Thus, it is inherent in any competitive activity that beginners will have two choices: being cannon fodder, or not playing. This is not unique to GW, and there is nothing broken about it.

Consider arcade games. Strong players can routinely dominate at a machine for hours at a time - not only kicking the losers off the machine (and to the end of the line, if there is one), but also forcing the losers to pay money for a rematch. What happens to beginner teams in GW is no different; in fact, GW beginners get off easy: you can go right back in, and you don't even need to stop at the change machine for quarters.

The game is obligated to give you a chance to play. It is not obligated to give you a chance to win.

No, new players get turned off because they don't want to suffer through losing and spending a few months to a year improving their skills before they see any results. If you aren't dedicated enough to do that, then you don't belong in PvP.


It isn't elitist, it is being realistic. I'll say it again, YOU ARE NOT ENTITLED TO ANYTHING. It is a fact with competitive environments. You have to go out and earn everything you had. I had to do it when I first started, and so did everyone else I have ever played with. Everyone starts out as nothing. It is your responsibility to turn nothing into something. It isn't mine or anybody elses responsibility to give you something. You must go out and earn it.


Sure it is. There is absolutely nothing stopping 8 new players from making a guild and playing guild wars except their own attitudes. It isn't like you have to be at a certain level before you are allowed to make friends and play the game. The field is open for everyone. People need to accept the level they are at and start playing at it. Instead they are coming onto forums and demanding a free pass.


You are looking at it wrong. you have to throw away the fact that the professional sports pay players and they use it as a means to make a living and look at it from a purely competitive standpoint. I use professional sports because they are the most known competitive environment. They both are games, and the both are means of competition, both have different levels of play for all sorts of different players, and both require work and dedication in order to play at their highest level. In Guild Wars and in sports, the players spend a long time honing their skills to be the best they can possibly be. The only difference is that professional sports adds an extra incentive to be good that video games don't (money). But money really doesn't change the fact that they are still competitive games so it doesn't play a role in this argument.

This

What would happen (and I'm sure Pistachio knows) is that they would all rage quit as they got their faces pounded into the dust over and over. What I don't understand is if you think so little of your own personal ability that you want to get into high ranked groups without any effort, why you would think its fair or even acceptable for you to complain that it's unfair high ranked players don't want to play with you.

They don't want to play you because you have not shown that you have any ability to play your role effectively and win games. High ranked groups are high ranked because they are a group of people who have done all the steps beforehand needed in order to get their ranking. Even an idiot who does hundreds of hours of HA will eventually get an inkling of their role. Those who drag their teams down will be relegated to where they belong - kicked out of the group.

lol second post on Guru /cheer

I'm only an R2.. and i'm agreeing with the so called "elitist" people here.

I started HA on a double weekend farming fame with RtL spike. I spent the entire day in a PUG lead by the same person and found him/her really friendly. Then, the moment he got his/her R3 he kicked everyone who wasn't R3 out of the team and started spamming "GLF RtL R3+". That put me off HA for a long time so i spent most of my days in AB, JQ, FA and RA (I never liked TA because there is so little variety... it's balanced or a gimmick). Now i'm a G3 and decided to give HA one more shot.

I've earned the right to be accepted by some teams because i've proven my skill with G3. Sure i have very little HA experience but R3-5 teams and even an R9 team once accepted me. I like to think that's because they understand the situation at HA as it is and recognise i have put work in to get what i want.

I started advertising on guru for HA guilds (thus my first post on guru ). I am dedicated to achieving my goal and am not willing to let rank discrimination get in the way of that. Similarly, the "elitists" are dedicated to their goals and are not going to let unexperienced R0 newbies, let's face it that's what we are, get in the way of that.

Now i'm in a HA guild which is exclusively R3+. They say G+2=R, making me a R5 by their terms lol. Anyway, the point is i'm learning very quickly and am well on my way to an R3 now.

Thus i have to agree with the "elitists" here. You should stop moaning on a forum and start earning your place in the high end PvP world

There really is no point in going on about this topic again, the "established" HA community have the doors bolted and locked on helping newer players into it, it's going to wither and die, let them fester in it.

Again there is no point to arguing, because they won't get the point. I mean it's not like footballers don't get coached...

Maybe they should just cap fame to so much per a day lol.

Erm no. That is ANet type thinking. It's like nerfing FGJ! when it's the sin that is the problem. And nerfing the cripple duration on PS when the recharge is the problem. If anything, that makes it harder for new players, they can't earn decent amounts of fame to get to the already high ranked players.

A few weeks ago i posted a suggestion for a baltazar title track, to addres the same problem. The main problem here is:

You need to PLAY to get experience, and if you dont get to play (ak if you dont have rank) you cant build up rank (/experience)..

* Over the past 4y i have payed a visit to HA every now and then, to see if i could get on a team. After waiting for 1 or 2h i then went back to RA because there, i atleast get to play...

!! I can fully understand higher experienced people want to play with equally experienced people, because you have higher chance to actually win. As a non ranked player i would prefer to be picked up by a high rank team, mainly because then i stand a chance to actually win so i can build up rank (same thing and logic reasoning)!!

After seeing reactions to my 'baltazar title track' and this thread i think the problem lies in the absence of Rank gained from RA and TA. As the logical way to the HA would be:

1. You fight in RA to gain basic experience of PvP and a general idear of skills you will be facing.
2. After getting tired of being on random teams, you will want to move on to TA where you learn how real teamplay works, iow how the skills work with other skills to form a teambuild instead of just a player build.
3. Then when you get experience with the team mechanics. You get to move on to a bigger team 8v8 in the HA.

Currently RA and TA lack titles to emphasise the experience gained!
- Sure there is the zaishen title, but if you can also get these by farming zaishen missions, this title then does not emphasise a Player v Player experience, as bots dont behave like human players;
- and if like me you find out about these keys after 'waisting' baltazar by not spending it, because you unlocked all PvP skills you want, there is nothing to show for your experience)
- thus chances are huge getting on a team will take ages, if you get on a team at all, and you go back to RA because there you can atleast play a few rounds, instead getting bored beyond believe and frustrated by all the 'leet' players 'whining' about rank :P

So this should be how it should/would work:
1. With a rank for RA, you will be choosen on a TA team given there are no TA ranked players available. If you have no RA rank, TA players can say, 'Hey noob, go fight in RA to build up some rank before comming here to try and waste our time'.
2. Then after you build up TA rank, you will be choosen on a HA team given there are no HA ranked players available. HA ranked players can point non ranked players to RA or TA.
3. Perhaps a stats window with the 3tracks would be nice too, as i would prefer to take a high rank RA and high rank TA, with Low HA rank; over someone with a low RA, low TA and low HA rank. mainly because of experience..

!!Then it would also be nice if the game engine would then place similar ranked teams against eachother and have winning teams then fight against higher ranked teams in a ladder structure.!!

This should give every player a PvP experience of their experience level, fill all arena's (mainly TA arena is empty, unless there is zaishen to be made) ... and make it easier for players with no HA experience to get on a team, as they can show they have experience from RA and TA...

People that are high ranked can still pick high ranked players, but if non available have a basis to pick non HA experience players on their other titles. And they can help totally unexperienced pvp'ers by pointing them to the RA, to start of their way in the GW-PvP system..

This to me atleast sounds like the only logically sollution (appart from removing the whole title thing from PvP). Or just call me silly

# Then ofcourse there is the last step (and/or ways around this), you get enough rank to be asked to join a PvP guild and you work the GvG ladded instead of HA.. or you find a PvP guild in one of the other Arena types. Or you find a guild in PvE that happens to also play TA or HA or even GvG. #
(If though you find a PvE guild with nice people to play PvE with, and you become friends, would you then leave them because you want to PvP, i would prefer not have to do this. If i can build up rank based on above system, i would not have to do this... and chances are you will find a PvE guild b4 you find a PvP guild, mainly because if you are new to the game, you will want to PvE first, if only to get the skills to PvP with)

** As for emotes to encompass the ranks; seeing alot of people dislike the spamming of these emotes, these should be limited to 2 for RA (say r3 and r6 rank), 2 for TA (say r3 and r6), and perhaps 3 for HA (say r3, r6 and r9/12; perhaps even 2 for HA is enough, because if you RA/TA/HA beyond r6 i would believe you PvP to PvP and not to get some emote altho it could be an incentive ..

Burst, Take the time to read the thread before you respond. I'll just quote myself on this one.


Of course the game isn't obligated to let you win, but if you think any new player to PvP can just jump into HA, you're kidding yourself.

It's obvious you're both only hearing what you want to hear. Not once, have I said new players are entitled to anything more than being able to play HA without having to jump through some ridiculous hoops. You seem to have a lot of trouble understanding this. I'm not asking for hand outs, I'm asking that the game be able to accommodate players that are new to HA, which it absolutely does not do. It's a fault in the system, not the players.

Case in point -
How is this story not absurd? If you want to play HA, you should just be able to play HA.


What I don't understand is why you think I even want to get into high ranked groups, or why you think I think new players should. Like Burst, you should read the thread before you respond. This isn't about getting some VIP pass to accrue free fame, it's about making a part of the game that is "open" to everyone, actually open to everyone.

Yes, there is no point in going on with this topic.

The problem is, all I'm seeing from you is a lot of handwaving, most of it self-contradictory.

From your posts, it isn't even clear exactly what you think the problem is, or what the solution should be. You state that you don't think there's a problem with high-ranked players making high-ranked groups ("it's their perogative"). You further state that you don't necessarily want to get into high-ranked groups, and you're not looking for a VIP pass. But then you state that all of this is a problem, because the game isn't open for everyone.

So which is it? Is it a problem or not? You say things like "accommodating players that are new to HA" and "open to everyone". How do you propose HA accommodate new players? The only suggestion I've seen so far is to make high-ranked players take low-ranked players in their groups - yet you've explicitly stated that you don't necessarily think they should.

You can. What prevents you from playing HA? What prevents you from forming a team of friends, guild/alliance members, and low-ranked randoms and just going in? This is the question you need to answer, because it will reveal where your problem really is.

9 out of 10 times you will lose and everyone /ragequits. that's possibly over 1 hour of looking for a team gone. what do you prefer?
wasting 1 hour in HA or actually playing PvP in RA?

this is HA for me, after 2 weeks i've gained... 30 fame.
that means if i want bambi i have to spend another 10 weeks, just to get into a team within an hour or so.
this will probarbly make me a whiner and stuff, just because i don't want to waste my time doing underworld and dying over and over again,
just to actually be able to 'begin' with HA.
this actually made me quit PvP altogether. i just don't want to waste my time anymore. (imo it's a waste)

How is this the fault of anyone but your team? More importantly, how can you seriously expect to win a significant number of matches as a beginner in a community full of veterans? Quitting because you "don't win enough" is an entitlement mentality that has no place in any competitive activity; it is not a legitimate complaint about rank discrimination because it has nothing to do with rank discrimination.

Losing 9 times out of 10 is not in any way, shape, or form equivalent to not being able to play HA. Again: the game is obligated to give you a chance to play. It is not obligated to give you a chance to win.